Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Year of Our Lord

For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” ~Romans 10:13. The Lord gave me a really interesting and wonderful year in ‘The Year of Our Lord’ 2010. I say ‘Year of Our Lord’ because it is very interesting, that in early documents by the founders of America, if they stated a year, they would say “The Year of Our Lord”, basically confessing Jesus as Lord, acknowledging the fact that something incredible happened in the past, and that something incredible is, God’s only begotten Son Jesus Christ came into the world. The Bible says “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” ~ Romans 10:9. You can’t deny it, this country was founded by Christians, you can state otherwise but the truth is the founding fathers believed, but that is a debate for another time. So ‘The Year of Our Lord 2010’ was one of the most interesting years of my life.

I am a member of (Central Baptist Church 1343 East Grande Blvd, Tyler, Texas) on the last Sunday of 2009 my Sunday school teacher Dan Sala gave us a challenge, he wanted us to write down goals for 2010 and seal them up in an envelope opening them up after the completion of 2010, I opened mine yesterday. What I had written, I didn’t think of as goals but instead what I knew God wanted of me. There were two things I wrote down:
1. I would give God complete Lordship, I would follow Jesus were ever He lead me.
2. I would love my neighbor as myself.
The Lord had already been working on my heart to be a witness for him but I really didn’t know how to go about it and I was for the most part a shy man, keeping to myself, trying not to bother anyone. My wife mentioned to me something about someone handing out gospel tracts, I have to confess I didn’t know what a Gospel tract was and I confessed this to her, she laughed of course but told me what one was. I had seen them before but didn’t know the word tract.

I have heard Christians talk for years about (callings). They would say things like: I was called into the ministry, or my brother got called into the mission field, my calling is to work with troubled teens, or to work with homeless children. I had often wondered about all of this calling stuff, is this for real? Looking back over the past year I discovered this. We are called once, and the calling is the same for everyone, we are called to Repentance and to follow Jesus, then He will lead. If you follow Jesus He will lead you wherever He wants you to go. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” Luke 5:32. He walked up to Matthew the tax collector and said, “’follow Me’. So he left all, rose up, and followed Him” ~Luke 5:27-28. Matthew became one of His twelve apostles, he wrote the Gospel of Matthew.

Now I said that 2010 was an incredible year, I followed Jesus and here is where he led me. If you had told me one year ago what God would have done through me in 2010 I would never have believed it.
• One year ago I didn’t know what a Gospel tract was, in 2010 I handed out somewhere near 2000 Gospel tracts.
• I had never really had a one on one witness encounter with anyone; in 2010 I directly witnessed to somewhere around 3000 people.
• English classes where always my worst subject in school I barley passed through high school and in college my stomach turned at the thought of writing a research paper. At the end of June God lead me to start writing about Him and thus this Blog was born, as of this writing, this Blog has been down loaded 1013 times and has been accessed by people in 10 different countries around the world.
• I said earlier that I was a quiet man keeping to myself, Paul told Timothy “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” ~2 Timothy 3:12 and that statement is as true as it gets. I would never have imagined how violently angry people can become at the name of Jesus Christ, and most of the time, it is not from the people you expect it from, but God has made me bold in 2010.

Every bit of this is God, I am not capable of even doing one of these things, and God is responsible for all. Jesus is the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings. He is the one that was, and is, and is yet to come. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. All glory to Him. Lord thank you for this past year, it has been an absolute wonderful journey serving You. You have never left me or forsaken me, You walked with me hand and hand every step of the way. You are my Lord and Savior. My hope is this to all that read this blog. That you will come to know Jesus as your Lord, your God, and your Savior. Jesus said: “I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the father except by Me” John 14:6. Jesus is the Way, all other ways are false. Lord Jesus I look forward to wherever you lead me in your year, “The Year of Our Lord 2011”

Repent and Trust in Jesus Christ alone,
Mike Peek